In a recent report by the Smart Card Alliance entitled, “Medical Identity Theft in Healthcare,” the study sites that, “Further evidence of the significance of the medical fraud problem is the allocation of $1.7 billion for fraud detection in the 2011 U.S. Health and Human Services budget.” In 2009 alone, 68 reported healthcare data breaches in the U.S. put over 11.3 million patient records at risk according to the Identity Theft and Resource Center (ITRC).

The report goes on to state that “the way to stop medical identity theft confusion is to improve patient identification and provide enhanced data production through strong authentication and encryption.” How can a healthcare organization achieve this? B2B Managed File Transfer. Protection of patient information does not happen just inside the four walls of your organization. Think of the providers, health record banks, health insurance and hospital Web portals.

The key is two-factor authentication and data encryption. Are you employing these security methodologies at your organization?

In an Information Week Analytics report, “Inside Out: Protecting Your Partnerships and Your Data,” Curtis Franklin, Jr. of Dark Reading writes, “Partners are a critical element (to enterprise security) – in fact, their importance is matched only by the potential threat they pose to the security of corporate data and the network infrastructure. For IT professionals, the vital question is how to balance trust versus risk in enabling communication between the organization and partners.”

Secure all points of contact with partners.

The report adds, “there have been instances in which partner connections were used to steal data or sabotage computer systems. These breaches show us that enterprises must stay vigilant about security, even in dealing with their closest and most trusted suppliers.” Other findings? “The difference between employee and partner risk varies by industry – in food service, partners accounted for as many as 70 percent of breaches; in the technology arena, partners accounted for only 18 percent.”

While concrete corporate security policies, firewalls and other security measures, help alleviate the threat, how do you ensure B2B partner and trading partner security is achieved while still optimizing those partnerships, making it easier for your partners to do business with you?

B2B Managed File Transfer – From secure ad-hoc file transfer to EDI to enterprise-wide Managed File Transfer a complete B2B communications solution can prevent these breaches from happening to you. Because whether the breach is accidental or intentional, the damage has still been done.

Business sector climbed from 21 percent to 41 percent between 2006 to 2009, the worst sector performance by far

Malicious attacks have surpassed human error for the first time in three years

Out of 498 breaches, only six reported that they had either encryption or other strong security features protecting the exposed data

What will the stats be for 2010? Take Preventative Measures.

The article goes on, stating, “Insanity might well be defined as repeating the same action again and again, and expecting a different outcome.” So, the ITRC compiled a list related to how businesses are addressing data breaches and security:

Insanity 1 – Electronic Breaches: After all the articles about hacking and the ever-growing cost of a breach, why isn’t encryption being used to protect personal identifying information? Proprietary information almost always seems to be well protected. Why not our customer/consumer personal identifying information (PII)?

Insanity 2 – Paper breaches: Why aren’t more state legislators passing laws about rendering paper documents unreadable prior to disposal if they contain PII? Do we dare ask that those laws be actually enforceable? Perhaps we are waiting for paper breaches to reach 35% of the total.

Insanity 3 – Breaches happen: Deal with it! You will get notification letters. Breach notification does not equal identity theft. Let’s stop the “blame game” and instead require breached entities to report breach incidents via a single public website. This would allow analysts (and law enforcement) to look for trends and link crimes to a single ring or hacker faster.

Insanity 4 – A Breach is a Breach: Let’s not kid ourselves. “Risk of harm” is not a useful standard for determining if the public and consumers should be notified about a breach, especially if the company involved gets to define “risk of harm.” If it is your #$@%2 SSN that is out on the Internet, do YOU think there is “risk of harm?” Some companies might say “no.”

Insanity 5 – Data on the Move: You will notice that statistically this is a bright spot, with a decreasing incidence in the past 3 years. But, really! This is 100% avoidable, either through use of encryption, or other safety measures. Laptops, portable storage devices and briefcases full of files, outside of the workplace, are still “breaches waiting to happen.” With tiered permissions, truncation, redaction and other recording tools, PII can be left where it belongs – behind encrypted walls at the workplace.

Efficiency and growth are key concerns to businesses in a global market. A B2B solution’s flexibility should allow you to easily integrate with back-end systems like EDI translators and databases, or application to application – migrating those legacy systems into a secure and automated file transfer system. A true B2B file transfer solution provides real-time visibility to all transfers and data exchanges taking place – creating greater efficiency and resulting in avoidance of fines due to SLAs, payment delays and performance gaps.

Growth is easy when you can on-board new partners quickly and securely. You can provide your partners with tools that make it easier for them to do business with you. In a business environment that is full of mergers and acquisitions and technology consolidations, data management is critical. The need for an easy and manageable way to keep control becomes more and more apparent. Managed File Transfer is one of the easiest ways to get your data under control, ensuring it’s secure while in transit – every step of the way.